One aspect I'm curious about is that since these fungi will get ~100% of their energy from sugar water, how do they end up comparing energy & water usage wise compared to regular meet.

Instead of growing alfalfa, you are growing sugar cane/beats. Instead of feeding/growing cows, you are feeding fungi.

Certainly, I'm willing to bet that this uses less water and energy, but is it 1 order of magnitude less or 10? The other meat alternatives (Impossible ,etc) have similar issues.

I live relatively near this, so hopefully I'll get a chance to try and cook this meat alternative in the next year. I love cooking meat in many of the traditional manners and niche like suos vide so I'm really interested in seeing how it differs and how versatile it is.

One thing I've disliked about the current plant based ones, is that they have limited availability in stores and are usually preformed and/or seasoned and super expensive (seems they should be cheaper than meat* if they are less resource intensive to produce).

*Given meat has many forms of subsidies (insurance, cheap water, etc.), direct price comparison is difficult.

Cows aren't paid for their labor producing meat. Farmers don't pay carbon taxes methane taxes for cow externalities.

Considering that people eat mushrooms all the time, most likely fine.

In fairness, it's not a crazy question - mushrooms contain a lot of undigestable and fermentable carbs (raffinose, chitin) that can affect ...passage...in some people, and cause flatulence in others. Westerners outside of central Europe tend not to eat meat-replacement-sized portions of mushrooms and are probably more familiar with the digestive dynamics of meat.